Blue-sky thinking on airline branding? A waste of time and money

Plane Talk: What’s in a name? Not as much as some carriers think

Buzzed off: Go has gone from Stansted, but Buzz has reappeared (Simon Calder)

Hong Kong has some of the toughest travel restrictions on the planet right now, which has caused immense pain for the city’s formidable airline, Cathay Pacific.

Or should that be plain Cathay? The marketing department has been keeping busy creating a campaign than promises: “We’ll soon be elevating your Cathay experience.”

The accompanying video shows some fancy graphics against a blue-sky background – ending with the word “Cathay”. Does this signify a permanent change, reflecting the fact that many of the carrier’s flights go west, away from the world’s biggest ocean? It would not be the first time a geographical term has been excised from a carrier’s identity.

British Midland, with its head office at Castle Donington by East Midlands Airport, rebranded as BMI because of the implication that it served only the heart of England, even though its main base was Heathrow. British European became Flybe, partly because the bosses needed a snappy internet-era name, and partly because the original sounded like a subsidiary of BA that specialised in European routes.

Northwest Orient is another case in point. The “Northwest” component remained throughout the US airline’s life, even though a glance at a map of America shows its Minnesota HQ is squarely north central. The “Orient” adorned the carrier’s jets when they flew the Atlantic to Gatwick airport – about as far as it is possible to get get from the exotic east, though ironically you could connect to Cathay Pacific and not fly across the Pacific to Hong Kong.

Gatwick was home to British Caledonian, the combo of British United Airways and Caledonian Airways that did, indeed fly to Scotland (as well as many other places). “BCal” had a holiday subsidiary, Blue Sky Holidays – a name that was picked up by British Airways when it acquired the Gatwick operator in 1987. A decade later, BA set up a low-cost subsidiary as Operation Blue Sky. The Stansted-based operation would become known as Go, itself devoured by easyJet in 2002.

Also at Stansted, Air UK went through a wretched metamorphosis, first becoming KLM UK after the Dutch airline bought the small scheduled carrier, then reemerging as Buzz – low-cost in name if not in nature.

During the three sad years of the existence of Buzz, KLM subsidised each passenger who had ever flown with the airline to the tune of £10. The losses were revealed by Michael O’Leary, chief executive of Ryanair, when he paid what he described as “petty cash” to acquire the airline in 2003. That summer, some rudimentary paintwork saw the Ryanair logo superimposed on Buzz’s garish yellow colour scheme. Buzz is now back as the Polish offshoot of Europe’s biggest budget airline.

One airline rebranding was specifically as a result of a tragedy. ValuJet was a small budget airline start-up. In 1996, 110 passengers and crew lost their lives when an inflight fire brought down their plane shortly after take-off from Miami. The carrier was partly blamed for poor maintenance practices. When it returned to the skies, it was known as AirTran, and flew well until Southwest took it over a decade ago.

Southwest, eh? That name ties the huge budget airline to a particular quadrant of the US, but I have happily flown on it in the American northwest, northeast, southeast and even Midwest.

As long as an airline is safe, professional and good value, no one cares if its name pertains to a particular part of the world. Keep the Pacific, Cathay: we like you just the way you are.